Saturday, April 05, 2014

I Hate The War

A very angry e-mail came in from a blogger of a non-community site which (I'm paraphrasing, not quoting) insists: I'm very upset with you. You are supposed to be a Hillary supporter and you have attacked her.

I've made actual friends much angrier than you over TV show critiques that Ava and I have done of the shows they make. Being friends with ____ doesn't mean their show gets a rave. If it deserves it, it gets it. If it's a lousy show, it gets called out.

I've known Hillary for many years. I have no desire to spend any time in any setting with her today.

The e-mail trashes my line about Hillary attempting to be "the baddest bitch in the whole damn town." That's a riff on Jim Croce's "Bad, Bad, Leroy Brown," FYI.

And you can bitch and moan all you want about that line -- I think the line's appropriate.

And that's the reason Hillary talked gender this week and tried to turn it into a media event.

We were right to call her out and we noted all she is another person screaming for war. We pointed out that the issues that made her 2008 campaign work were now ignored -- employment, breast cancer, etc. Because all she could do is snarl, "Kill! Kill! Kill!"

That didn't go over well in Camp Clinton, what I wrote didn't. But the polling they did bore me out. Hillary's not planning to run. Hillary's testing the waters. She wants to run. She may run.

But she has a serious image problem.

She's only the 'front runner' because a lazy media needs something to fluff about and because there's not a field of candidates.

She had this same thing in 2006.

And she blew it.

She should have apologized for her Iraq War vote. She should have said it was wrong. She should have said she had learned from it.

Instead, she offered that holier-than-thou little snippet of how would-I-vote-for-it-today?-no. And suddenly, in her bitchy remarks, the bad guys and gals weren't the ones who sent troops into war, it was those who were calling the illegal war out.

She was tone deaf beyond belief and that was 2007 and that's part of the reason Barack overcame her.

She's not Bill. Bill knows how to interact with people.

The key is to be at ease. Bill never doubts that he can win an audience over. Hillary goes in with a chip on her shoulder. Which can allow her to work harder than anyone else, it can also allow her to go beyond accepted limits (under sniper fire remarks, for example) and it (way too often) results in her going defensive.

She talked gender this week and didn't help women and didn't help herself.

Not only did it lead the press to start noting that her campaign treated many reporters poorly -- and there will be more on that in the media -- but she looked insane.

Is the media biased?

Absolutely.

Gloria Steinem, Susan Faludi, Jessica Valenti, any number of women could have given those remarks exactly as Hillary did and it would have been fine.

Because people would have thought, "Who the hell are you to be angry? You're successful, you're wealthy . . ."

Hillary should have tried wry humor -- and that may have been her attempt, it may be what passes for humor for her these days.

But it came off angry.

And it never acknowledged the anger.

Jane's the best speaker today. If she'd said those same words in that same voice and tone and done so accidentally, she would have registered it while delivering the remarks and would have added something like, "Do I sound angry? That's because I am. I am so angry that even now young women are having to deal with this. We've been fighting this forever and it's still thriving."

Immediately, Jane can be as angry as she wants. It's no longer about her, it's about the women she joined with to fight sexism years ago and it's about the young women still being confronted with it.

If Hillary's campaign sinks, it's not going to be because of me. It's going to be because Hillary fawners and groupies like the blogger who e-mailed.

Hillary looks like a beast as she screams for war. This behavior is similar to John McCain's and what got him painted as crazy in the 2008 race.

So if you're trying to get Hillary elected president, now's the time for you to be telling her to lay off the angry cries for war.

When others enter the race for the Democratic Party's presidential nomination, Hillary's soft and fuzzy coverage will be over. As you should have noticed by Friday, the press was already being vocal about the wounds -- real and imagined -- they suffered from Hillary's 2008 campaign. There is huge press animosity towards her.

Hillary's never grasped perception. She's always required handlers or Bill to explain it to her.

That's only more true today.

And why she tries to walk away from her all-war-all-the-time anger position by giving a speech on sexism which is characterized as angry?

That did nothing to help her and the photos were even worse.

She has speech writers, they should have assembled something with wry humor.

Instead, it was another cycle of angry Hillary.

Hillary was supposed to have been in San Diego delivering a speech.

She instead delivered it by satellite.

Why?

She didn't want to face protesters led by Pat Smith.

Pat Smith's not going away. I stated here months ago that I had no plans to vote for Hillary and the only thing that might change that would be her apologizing to Pat Smith.

Pat's the mother of Sean Smith who, along with Tyrone Woods, Chris Doherty and US Ambassador Chris Stevens -- was killed in Libya September 11, 2012.

Pat Smith deserves an apology and I've likened her to Cindy Sheehan before.

But grasp the perception that Hillary sent out this week on that.

Pat and a group of people were going to protest (supposedly it was going to be a small protest) and Hillary cancels a public appearance to avoid a small protest?

Again, I've compared to Cindy (which I mean as a compliment). I didn't compare Hillary to Bully Boy Bush. But damned if she didn't act like him this week. It was as cowardly as Bully Boy Bush hiding out on his Crawford Ranch-ette while Cindy staged Camp Casey.

In fact, it was actually more cowardly because Camp Casey had big numbers and the San Diego protest was supposedly going to be smaller. And Hillary couldn't face that?

She's thinking about being president but can't handle a small protest outside of one of her speeches?

And if she does run, these won't be small protests.

Pat Smith should know now she has tremendous power.

The threat of a protest by Smith and a few others sent Hillary running.

Again, Hillary's an idiot when it comes to perception.

I think Pat Smith deserves an apology.

Even if Hillary doesn't think so, there's the perception issue.

If Bill were running, he would have met with Pat long ago.

He would have done so for perception reasons if no other reason. (Though I think Bill would have felt compassion for Pat if it had been his actions and not Hillary's.)

(To be clear, I'm not talking about what did or did not happen in Benghazi. I'm referring to tone deaf statements by Hillary that appeared to trivialize Sean, Glen, Tyrone and Chris and I'm referring to a promise Hillary made to Pat which Hillary then didn't keep. That's why I'm saying Pat's owed an apology.)

Bill would have met with Pat, would have offered an apology and heard her out.

In doing so, he would have neutralized any threat she could have had to his campaign.

Hillary's so damn stupid about perception. If she does try to run, most likely a month into 2016, she'll be wondering how her supposed lock on the nomination slipped away again?

There is no 'context' for it (though Huffington Post tried to pretend there was just last month).

The press is the biggest purveyor of S&M in this country and they love to be beat up by their betters. So they loved Hillary's snarling and screaming. While I was calling it out, they were praising it.

I know perception.

And who was right, who was wrong about those remarks?

They feed into the image of Hillary as an angry, unfeeling bitch.

She should have kept control of her emotions and she certainly should never have snarled, "What difference does it make!"

Not when you're talking about four dead Americans.

Not when you're seeking a career in politics.

She's made one rookie mistake after another and she's not a rookie.

Super delegates who supported her in her 2008 run? Six have told me they can't believe how she conducts herself in public today. Two say they won't support her if she runs, the other four say they pray she doesn't run.

They're not able to offer more than that which is sad because it is
news. If no one's talking about the real points of this by the time we
do the snapshot tonight, I'll go over it. But it's really sad that the
media is as uninformed as it is. Neither Fox nor Free Beacon are
reporting. They're repeating from a letter.The letter's accurate, that's not the issue. Again, hopefully some
grown ups will enter the conversation before I start dictating the
snapshot tonight. If that doesn't happen, I'll do the walk through
myself.

There was no grown up in the room so I had to be the grown up.

Hillary refused to have an IG over the State Dept. Under her, the State Dept refused to inform the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction what the State Dept's plans were when it took over the lead -- from DoD on October 1, 2011 -- on the US mission in Iraq. Her department also refused to inform Congress.

Now while the blogger was busying herself pretending that Hillary's job was to act out Gidget Grows Up (that's the one where Gidget joins the United Nations) and posted photos and raves over Hillary in this country or that, we were attending Congressional hearings and hearing the reality of what was going on.

The missing millions goes to oversight -- specifically, the lack of it. For her entire four years as Secretary of State, Hillary rejected oversight. There's never, ever been a time like that in the history of the Inspector Generals. She didn't want oversight and she screwed up.

That's on her and it really does serious damage to any run for the White House she might have.

Not only was her anti-transparency stance anti-democratic and not only does it question her competency as a leader, it also feeds into the negative perceptions that have always swirled around her.

One of the super delegates who supporter her in 2008 characterized Hillary's current public dance as, "She seems to think we owe her the nomination after 2008."

The blogger should worry less about the supposed 'harm' I'm doing -- I'm just telling the truth -- and more about her own site which exists not to pressure Hillary but to praise and justify everything Hillary does -- even when its repulsive.

The Iraq War is not a faded memory.

Hillary screaming for war on Syria or US troops in Ukraine or comparing Russian President Vladimir Putin to Hitler just remind many Democrats why they didn't want to support a blood thirty War Hawk in 2008. She could bite the head off a bat tomorrow and it wouldn't shock a lot of people.

Hillary's refused to speak out against Nouri al-Maliki. That's an Iraq issue that's going to bite her in the ass. She's also going to find less support from Jewish Americans this go round.

Especially if Barack hands over the Jewish Archives to the Iraqi government.

Those artifacts were stolen from Iraqi Jews. They do not belong to the government of Iraq.

And if they go to Iraq, it's going to become a big issue.

How does this effect Hillary?

She refused to address this issue. Many Jewish leaders called on her to. In the last months -- since the exhibit opened at the National Archives in DC and the artifacts have been on display -- there's been a lot of press on it. But this campaign to save the artifacts goes back years. Hillary left it as unfinished business. She refused to address the issue.

If those artifacts are handed over to Iraq, Hillary's going to find that many Jewish Americans who supported her in 2008 won't support her in 2016.

Me?

I've already said she needs to apologize to Pat Smith and I'm not supporting her in any way otherwise. But what she's demonstrated in the years since 2008 isn't, "Once a War Hawk, always a War Hawk." No, she's demonstrated, "A War Hawk only grows more blood thirsty." She needs fresh 'kills' and that's why I won't be supporting her. (And I probably won't support anyone. You're not given my vote, you earn it. And I don't vote based on fear.) Illustration is Isaiah's The World Today Just Nuts "Bloody War Hawks" from September 30, 2007.

About Me

We do not open attachments. Stop e-mailing them. Threats and abusive e-mail are not covered by any privacy rule. This isn't to the reporters at a certain paper (keep 'em coming, they are funny). This is for the likes of failed comics who think they can threaten via e-mails and then whine, "E-mails are supposed to be private." E-mail threats will be turned over to the FBI and they will be noted here with the names and anything I feel like quoting.
This also applies to anyone writing to complain about a friend of mine. That's not why the public account exists.